


Do you love me?

by alinewrites



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:33:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alinewrites/pseuds/alinewrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blackmail, death threats and hot sex. What more do you want?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do you love me?

"It's been six weeks, Beecher. Forty-one fucking days and you didn't even pick up your fucking phone; so guess what? Think I'm gonna take a walk to the post office – stretch my legs – and post the pics. About, say… Tomorrow around noon. So I'd hurry if I were you."

……..

Toby parked the car in an illegal area – the hell with that. If it was the most serious offense he could be charged with, then so be it. His freedom was at stake, possibly his life if he didn't find Keller now. Toby knew the message by heart – he had listened to it on his cell phone a dozen times at least with a growing feeling of doom, not doubting for a second that Keller would carry out his threat. And he was late – he'd driven all night and part of the morning, sick with fear – please let me be there in time - then he’d fallen asleep, exhausted, at some god-forsaken rest area and woken up – too fucking late.

Fuck, where was Keller? This street was the quickest, most direct way from Keller's apartment to the post office; Beecher remembered taking it with Keller, once or twice. He looked around frantically and finally spotted Keller walking across the street with his usual unhurried, come-see-how-good-I-am stride, and rushed to him, elbowing his way through the crowd of the late Saturday afternoon, finally managing to grab Keller's arm, trying not to stare too obviously at the big brown envelope in Keller’s hand… “Chris, please… I can explain. Please, don’t…” He was breathless and hated how desperate he sounded.

Keller shook himself free and kept on walking.

“Please!”

This time Keller stopped and glared at him. “You’re late, Beecher,” he said, “I gave you more than enough time.”

Toby would have argued but someone bumped into him; he stumbled and fell against Keller’s chest, Keller’s arm coming around him to keep him from falling – an automatic reaction. Their eyes met and Toby felt the surge of Keller’s body against his. He yielded as Keller shoved him against the storefront in the alley.

“Six fucking weeks, Beecher," Keller said, his voice tense with anger, "A thousand dollars you owe me; so the explanation had better be good, or this…” Keller waved the envelope under Beecher’s nose, “is going to land on some cops desk in no time.”

Toby closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Listen… My son Gary was in the hospital all this time; it was…” Keller looked away, bored already. “Please. I was worried to death; I didn’t dare tell you. I lost… I completely lost any sense of time and…”

A hand curled around his throat, almost choking him.

“What makes you think I give a fuck, Beecher?” Keller hissed.

The noises of the city filled Toby's ears – people talking, yelling, cars running past them and the sound of his blood pulsing in his ears. He closed his eyes, waiting for the smothering grip to loosen.

“So. You wanna make it up to me, don’t you?” Keller said, his voice flat, easing the vice-like hold around Beecher's throat.

“Yes,” Toby said. An arm came across his chest, pinning him against the wall.

“Then you’d better make it real good, Beecher. And when you do, maybe then I’ll listen to you."

Dancing with the devil probably feels like this, Toby thought, as strong fingers tugged at his hair, pulling him closer, a tattooed muscled arm curling around his shoulder. When the kiss came, Toby drowned in it, letting his hands roam over Keller’s strong back.

“Let’s go,” Keller said, a little breathless, “my bike's close by."

They kissed in the elevator again, still hungry, their cheeks and nose chilled with the winter cold, barely made it inside Keller’s apartment, hands busy - too many clothes, not enough skin. Toby was pushed to his knees, Keller standing in front of him.

Toby deep-throated Keller's cock justas he'd been taught to, closing his eyes, breathing through his nose, willing, accepting, welcoming the invasion...

“Fuck! Go on, Toby,” Keller said, his fingers stroking Toby's face lightly, his thighs trembling when Toby started sucking in earnest. After a moment, a tug at his hair stopped him.

“No,” Keller said, pushing Toby away roughly, then pulling him up to his feet and dragging him to the unmade bed. “Not like this. I wanna come in your ass, Beecher, I wanna fuck you hard and deep – no fucking rubber between us today.” he smiled that wicked smile Beecher had come to associate with trouble. “How would you like that? Just you and me?” 

Do I have a choice? Toby thought. The bastard knows I'll do anything; he's only playing with me. Keller slept around a lot, men, women – he didn't even bother lying about that. He probably fucked bareback just for the thrill of it. Then Toby thought of Gen – What will I tell her? What the hell am I supposed to do? Use condoms with my own wife? He would've yelled out in anger –instead, he gasped at the obscenities Keller was breathing in his ear and thrust instinctively in the hand wrapped around his cock. God, I am so fucked…

Keller’s laugh was deep and hot. “You fucking slut" Keller said, pushing Toby down on his back, "I wanna watch you."

No rubber –hot silky skin caressing Toby's thighs and ass, no barrier, just the tantalizing touch of bare flesh and when Keller pushed inside him Beecher had to close his eyes, trying to stifle a sob.

"You like it like this, Beecher," Keller said, "I know you do. Stop lying to yourself."

And that was something Toby couldn't deny – he had been unable to deny it from that first evening in the bar, when Keller had got Toby thoroughly drunk, overwhelming him with his presence, his voice, his smell; his hands never letting go of Toby's hips, Toby's arm, Toby's shoulders; and Toby, who'd never fucked a man before (that boy in high school didn't count) had surrendered.. Kisses. Caresses. More kisses, deeper, more demanding and Beecher had given in to Keller's lust.

"God," he moaned as Keller pulled out of him almost completely before pushing back hard – that felt so good, and Keller smiled, doing it again, and again, slow, deep strokes that kept Beecher on the edge, his hands around Toby's wrists, leaning forward to kiss him, open-mouthed lascivious wet kisses, moans of pleasure…

"Do you love me?" Keller asked – an ironic question, that, but Keller's voice was as silky as the hard cock pushing inside him – "Do you love me?" – over and over and Toby couldn't help it; he forgot about the money and the pictures Keller had lain on the bed after their first night together – and he said, "Yes, yes; I love you. I do," pushing back, fucking himself on Keller's cock, impaling himself willingly – damning himself. They came together too soon, Toby's cry dying in Keller's mouth.

After that, they lay for a moment, entangled, Keller's arms wrapped around Beecher. "Fuck, you're good," he said, a little breathlessly, and Toby sighed in resigned contentment, and he must have dozed after that because Keller's voice against his ear startled him awake.

"How is he now?"

It took a moment for Toby to surface and realize that Keller was talking about Gary, pursuing their interrupted conversation. "He's better. The doctors say it's OK for now. We have to wait a whole year to make sure it won't come back. But you know… We worried a lot."

"And you justforgot about me." It was a statement.

Toby turned to face Keller; in the dim light his eyes were almost black, his face a stone mask, harsh features sculpted by the shadows. "No," Beecher said, "I didn't. But I didn't have the money. The hospital bill was exorbitant and Gen took a month’s leave of absence to be with him."

Keller said nothing for a moment, his eyes still hooded. "Why didn't you fucking call?"

Toby reached out a tentative hand, brushed trembling fingers against Keller's mouth, shivered when sharp teeth bit the flesh, hard. "I don't know. I guess… I guess I was scared."

"I would've sent the fucking pics, Beecher. Did you think I wouldn't?" Keller was weighing against him now, pushing him back, pinning him to the mattress, a knee spreading his legs, hard again so soon, his eyes a dark storm, his voice soft and smooth but lethal. "I will if you do it again. Do you remember the pictures, Beecher?"

Toby tried to turn his face away but Keller grabbed his hair, forcing Toby to look straight into his eyes.

"Do you?"

"Yes," Toby whispered - the hot wet tip of Keller's cock nudging his belly, his inescapable voice torturing him.

"Yes. You do. Your car and the license plate are so clear on the picture, so perfectly readable. I think I managed to take a fairly good picture of the little girl's body on the ground, the broken bike… don't you think?"

"Yes. Yes you did." Toby said, tears rolling down his face – Keller licked them away.

"If the cops get the pics, Toby, you'll go to prison, and you won't stand a chance in there. Blond hair, baby blue eyes, this body… They'd rape you over and over; make you their fucking bitch. Kill you. Tell me you understand that."

Toby closed his eyes; Keller's lips touched his – almost chaste.

"Tell me."

"I know. I understand."

Chris entered him slowly, the pain flashing through Beecher like fire, and dying – one smooth thrust and Chris was all the way inside. "Good," Chris said, "Good. Now listen… next time it happens, you call me. You tell me. We'll find a way together."

The second thrust was deeper and sharper – Toby cried out.

"Don't ever fucking do this to me again, Toby."

Toby arched his body to meet the next punishing thrust and didn't have any breath left to answer. Soon neither did Chris.

After the sex, Toby lay awake for a long time, once more pondering his choices – he snorted inwardly. What fucking choice did he have anyway? He'd been shit-faced, driven too fast through the quiet streets and hit the little girl – killed her; killed her, Jesus fucking Christ, he'd killed a little girl who hadn't been older than his Holly; he still couldn't believe it – and driven away as fast as he'd been able to, like the coward he was, hands shaking, sweat rolling down his body. He'd spent the next three weeks in a state of abject terror, every noise startling him; terrified at the idea that the cops would come knocking at his door and that his life would be over. Prison. For years. Gen would never forgive him; he'd lose his kids. He'd lose everything.

For days, his fear had warred with the remorse and shame he felt. He had developed insomnia and lost his appetite; the usual tricks – exhausting himself at the gym, drowning himself in work – had failed pathetically. He was desperately trying to get a grip, to come to terms with the horror of what he'd done when he met Keller in a bar where he'd gone to drown the remorse and the fear.

Toby had been standing at the bar, drinking, looking around. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could still hear the conversations, the laughter and the heavy, steady pulse of the music reverberating through his body; he could still taste the scotch against his tongue, the burn of alcohol down his throat; he could smell the smoke and the sweat. He could see the yellowed pictures on the walls. And Keller, standing there, listening, patient and caring, Keller, looking so good in black leather pants a white sleeveless t-shirt. Toby remembered the night in the little room upstairs, the blazing pleasure burning the pain away. But at dawn’s light, Keller had retrieved a big brown envelope, opened it, its content spilling on the bed sheets – pictures of Toby's car and of Toby inside the car, pictures of the vanity license plate. And the dead child lying near the broken bike, all displayed in sharp black and white.

Toby had just stood there frozen, the desert in his mouth while Keller laid down his conditions - he wanted five hundred dollars a month or he'd send the evidence to the cops. Five hundred dollars and Beecher once a month at his place just for him to fuck. And Beecher had been so terrified – he'd tried to hit him. Kill him. Run away. Been dragged back to the room forcibly and fucked again.

Toby had paid eventually; Keller was good at blackmail, menacing, determined, and cruel. And he was like a Schedule I drug, an addictive, don’t-take-no-prisoners drug. An overwhelming presence in Beecher's life, devouring, tainting everything, pervading his whole being.

"I can hear you thinking, Toby," Keller said in the dark, his voice thick. "Get some sleep because I intend to fuck you again first thing in the morning and all day and all fucking night for as long as you're here."

Toby didn't remember falling asleep but light was already dancing across the room when he woke up. Keller was sitting on the nearest chair, a cup of hot coffee in hand. Beecher had a vivid memory of buying four of these brown leather chairs for the apartment; the new queen-sized bed and the brown leather couch where they'd fucked so many times. He straightened up. "Weren't you supposed to fuck me first thing in the morning?"

Keller eyed him speculatively before handing out the cup. "What makes you so sure I didn't," he said, and when Beecher opened his mouth, he shrugged. "I don't get any kicks out of fucking corpses and besides, I'm tired doing all the work. Now it’s your turn. You fuck me."

Toby sipped the coffee, keeping his eyes down. Such a flexible and considerate lover Chris was. Even during the roughest fucks, he was still selflessly absorbed in Toby's pleasure. Still, fucking didn't have its usual appeal; there was a black cloud hovering over Toby's mood. "Listen," he said, "there's something you should know about the money…"

Keller rose from the chair slowly and came to sit by the bed, taking the empty cup from Toby's hand and staring at him. "Don't, Toby. I'm ready to write the last two months off – nothing more." Then he stripped and lay down on the bed, waiting, watching Toby's every move through half-closed lids, almost purring with anticipated pleasure.

Later Keller left for one of those mysterious errands he occasionally ran, telling Toby he'd be back in the middle of the afternoon and that they would take a ride together later – maybe take in a movie orwhatever they felt like doing. That sounded awfully domestic; sometimes Toby thought that all Keller really wanted was a normal life, or the appearance of it since it was obvious that he wouldn't be able to put up with it for long – a long list of ex-wives was an obvious sign of Keller's inability to cope with conjugality.

Toby waited by the window until he saw the bike disappear and started the search. For the pictures of course – half heartedly, because he'd been doing it before, in vain. There were a lot of things to be found – none of them useful, all of them disturbing. Two loaded guns hidden in the back of the kitchen closet, and shanks, five of them. One of them was new – one of the guns too. Magazines – girls and bikes. Books – of all kinds, most of them from various libraries; Chris had never returned them. One of the books was called "Surviving Prison" and was dedicated by the author to Chris, with thanks for protecting him all along; what it meant Toby didn't want to know. Other than that… No camera, no computer, no letters, no brown envelope, nothing of interest, not a single picture of anyone. Same as always, Toby thought, sitting on the couch, head in hands. If he hadn't seen the pictures, he might have thought they didn't even exist – but he'd seen them, more than once; every time actually Keller thought Beecher needed the reminder. Probably Keller kept them at one of his ex-wives' places. Toby rose from the couch – that one had cost a bit, he thought fleetingly, but he'd paid for it happily; it was just the kind of things he loved and that Gen would never agree to buy. He spent some time putting everything back in order. Keller would know, of course, and not care because there was nothing to be found that could balance Keller's lethal weapon. Even the cream leather wallet Toby had once found, stained with something that had to be blood, and the papers in it didn't mean much. Asked about it, Keller had shrugged, said something about some bitch (a male one, from the name on the papers) forgetting it, probably not even remembering where he'd spent the night. He'd had to get rid of it someday. And actually, the wallet was gone.

Toby sat down again and sighed. As a kid, he'd been scared to go to prison; the product of having a too vivid imagination, probably. Or maybe a telltale sign of some deeply hidden weakness. A predisposition to stray. I killed a little girl, he thought burying his head in his hands, and I didn't even turn myself in. All I was able to think about was keeping my precious little ass intact – my mother used to say that what no one knows doesn't exist. But Keller knows. He got up, suddenly restless, the urge for a drink too sharp to be ignored; the need to have everything back to normal, blur away the sharp painful reality, the worry, the anguish, get himself some peace.

He was nursing a glass of bourbon when Keller came back. "Had a nice look around, did ya?" Keller asked, sitting beside him. When Keller kissed him, some of the bourbon spilled on Toby's thigh and Keller let go of him. "You taste good," he said, licking his lips while Toby put the glass back on the table.

"It's not me," Toby said, "It's the booze."

Keller shook his head, pushed Toby back down on the couch, hovering over him, leaning forward to kiss his neck, rolling a strand of fair hair around his fingers, letting his mouth wander lower and lower still. "How long are you staying?" he asked.

"Gen took the kids to her sister in Colorado," Toby said, resting his head on the armrest and closing his eyes, "you got me on your hands for the whole week, I'm afraid. Maybe more. It's been… difficult with Gen, lately. And Gary needs a quiet place to make a complete recovery; he's still very weak."

"You love them," Keller said, leaning back. "Your kids, I mean, you really love them."

"I'm not good enough to be their father."

Keller's gaze roamed all over him, like he was looking for some hidden truth and Toby wondered if Keller had a father somewhere. Had he ever been a kid? Every time Toby tried to imagine Keller as a little boy, he failed. Sometimes he had the nagging feeling that Keller wasn't real, that he was some kind of demon, an avenging angel, maybe, a Nemesis, who'd been thrown into Beecher's life to make him expiate. Only the expiation was so good…

"What?" Toby finally asked.

"Nothing. I think you probably are a good father. And your kids probably love you. It would be a shame to lose all this."

Toby met Keller's eyes, so dark, so blue. "Do you despise me for what I did?"

Keller shrugged. "I don't give a damn. You did what you thought you had to do."

Which was a typical Keller answer, Toby thought as Keller resumed his assault, stripping him, kissing, biting every inch of bare skin. Not really the reassurance Toby needed, but Keller seemed to have some consideration for him as a father and maybe, Toby thought, maybe that was one of Keller's rare weaknesses, something Toby could file away and exploit later.

Later they went to a bar and listened to some blues, standing in the back of the room while the band played. Keller seemed to have a soft spot for that kind of music, and Beecher, in turn, had learned to like it. The songs were long enough to become something almost physical, something that roused unknown emotions inside Toby. Looking sideways, he saw Keller, caught in the mood. For a moment, he studied his sharp profile, until Keller, feeling observed, looked back, the lights of the bar dancing in the depths of his eyes, looking very much like a hunter. Then he smiled, a genuine, shiny smile that took the illusion away and made him look like a lover. His arm came around Beecher's shoulder and pulled him close.

"Do you still want to kill me?" Keller asked on their way home, smiling.

"Sometimes, yes," Toby said, looking at Keller with a self-deprecating smiled.

Keller laughed. "But we're so happy together, don't you see?"

He sounded so genuinely convinced that Toby sighed; he probably wouldn't be able to make Keller understand the difference between what they had and love.

"Are you pissed off about the money?" Keller asked.

"It's about the fact that you have me by the balls, Chris. It doesn't matter if I like it or not; I have no choice."

Keller seemed to think about it for a moment. "Still… you like it?"

"Yes. God help me, I think I do."

"Fine, then. Fucking fine."

……………………….

The days and the night came and went. Rain became snow and Toby couldn't drive back before the tenth day, which gave him a lot of time to swing from the strange happiness of being with Keller to the desperate moments when he was able to picture the slow unstoppable dissolution of his life as he'd known it. At best, he'd lose his wife, and wouldn't see his kids more than a few days a month. At worst… The worst didn't stand thinking about. Keller's company, at least, had the virtue of keeping the worst of the nightmares at bay; he still felt sick though, every time he thought of the little girl he'd killed. It was an accident – he would survive it; he had to. If he clung to this certainty hard enough, time would erase most of the memories. Maybe someday he wouldn't think about it every day, every night…

The day he left, Keller walked him to his car.

"You'll be fine," he said, sounding much more confident than Toby felt.

Toby sighed, shivering in the cold wind. "You'll get the money on Monday."

"It's OK, Beecher. Your secret's safe with me."

Beecher snorted but said nothing. They stood there for a couple of minute, then Keller looked around – they were alone. Pulling Toby close, he kissed him. "Take care of your kids. They need a father. Believe me, they do."

Someday, maybe, Toby thought, driving away, glancing at Keller's diminishing silhouette in the rear-view mirror, someday he'd find a way to thwart Keller's plans. Until then, Toby's life would be a narrow bumpy winding road, nothing to do with the straight highway his parents had been preparing him for. He guessed that his ability to keep going in spite of all was at least a tribute to his surviving skills. As he was leaving the city, the snow stopped and the sun started shining, painting the landscape around Toby in bright dazzling colours – like hope.


End file.
